Traditional ethics mixed with new media recommended to avoid 'America's Got Talent' news

Arriana Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post

Much of our news today is driven by popularity, by votes and comments.  This means someone who spends considerable money, time or both on social media, or has an agenda that supports many followers, may acquire readership for articles whereas news and information the public needs can be abbreviated and sensationalized to attract attention.  Do we want news that is treated like Americas Got Talent so that serious, ongoing education is interrupted? Or is there a different way to offer news that most especially is critical because of the need for collaboration and solid information as new threats to world security occur?


The Huffington Post consists largely of articles written by hundreds of unpaid bloggers, quoted as reliable sources, which many can be; but like many outlets who's picked for the stable and who stays in it is like  America's Got Talent.   Some of the bloggers, for example, have been chosen from those individuals who have outstanding activity from posting comments and obtaining followers and responses.  But it isn't just large blogs that respond to social media vote-getting activities but other news outlets too, which may negatively impact the traditional role of the press in its role of educating, informing and holding power to account.

 The television show America's Got Talent allows people to rise to the top and perhaps win the contest and receive a recording contract and other perks.  It selects people at each level based on the judge's selections and audience response.  This means a balance of popularity and merit, although the judges also consider audience potential in casting their vote.

The outcome of a given contest might offer a serious surprise, as in the case of 10-year-old Jackie Evancho, when many people believed she would ultimately win on America's Got Talent because of her uniquely gifted voice and presentation on the show, that everyone agreed was special.    She lost, however, to Michael Grimm, a talented fellow for sure but didn't have the accolades and YouTube views that Evancho had had all along.  But America seems to likes being contrary too, a form of defiance that sometimes is used just to upset the odds in a fashion that says "you can't control what I do."  Even when the audience favors a contestant, the person actually picked to proceed may simply be a result of this contrariness that often occurs when there is a dispute and people want to voice their independence.  The same thing occurred in the case of Susan Boyle, who lost the top spot on Britains Got Talent, as people began to find the unpopular or the negative in her personality or simply were contrary in not wanting to conform to any predictable outcome.

Popularity picks may not, therefore, foster the best talent but the most popular for a segment of the culture that happens to vote.  But there are many people who enjoy the talent of those who perform who never cast votes in these contests.  So the potential of picking the best talent is lessened by those who don't participate in the voting process.  The cream may not rise to the top.  Do we want the news treated the same way?  What has been the result?  The press is said to be no longer trusted, as observed by Gallup Poll results in 2012, and divisions in social and political areas are often along the lines of the more sensationalized factions.

The same strategy of using what is popular, or anticipated as vote-getting by readers or news observers, is now used for news sites as well, both citizen and traditional, if we could call the Huffington Post either.  The Huffington Post is a mix of both professional journalists and bloggers with specialties in particular areas, making it difficult for the public to sort out what is fact-checked and responsible information and what is not. Guiding the front page by picking the popular, based on a select few who vote, means front page news, and news that lingers, often focuses on the trivial not the headline material that may be most important.

Picking the popular also means those with enough Facebook friends and other contacts on the Internet have great advantage over those who focus on important news and features and have less time to solicit attention on social media sites.  There are those who write well and those who sell well; and sometimes they are both very different. 

News outlets have editors and America's Got Talent has judges who assess the talent and offer feedback.  But the owners of newspapers, and their investors, look for readership numbers as the evidence that a news item is of value, even as major news stories are sometimes cut short in favor of the details of a recent celebrity wedding, such as that of George Clooney, where days were spent in covering every detail.  This occurred in the midst of weather disasters and terrorist threats, with 10 minutes at the top of the hour devoted to the major news and the rest a narrative of entertainment value.

This tendency to vote for the popular, as it dominates all forms of media, means the petty, irrelevant or simply entertaining, offered as it is in large quantities everywhere, simply overwhelms news that has major information and education.  The need to know is answered by shorter and shorter phrases and sentences, so that even the language of the news is abbreviated like so many text messages.  This is explained away by those who say people are simply to busy to read or listen, yet this negates the fact that books like Fifty Shades of Grey are read by millions.

Traditional news sites are driven by popularity also because of the growing number of citizen news sites where people offer their take on the news.  Some of these sites are managed by editors; others are blogs set up by ordinary folks often with political or religious agendas. These continue to proliferate; and as they do, it simply drives the problem deeper that the important, front-line news may not have either the details or the top tier for public notice.  Search engines also favor the flavor of the month.

The concern in using vote-getting to determine the headlines and what is featured first is that it takes away from the premise most pronounced by those who wrote the protections for the press in the Constitution.  The U.S. Constitution, in terms of its guarantee of freedom of the press, is one form of providing the press its own platform, but other free governments have their protections as well.  Those protections relate to the relevance of the material and the primary role of the press.  That primary role is not entertainment but education and information relevant for living one's life.  This, and holding power to account, were the three main goals of journalism, according to Thomas Jefferson.Polls and popularity votes and cliques that gather together to foster a friend's success do not protect democracy but in fact jeopardize the ongoing, universal education democracy needs to succeed. 

Most people want to find an area where they can succeed and be noticed.  If a child is a budding artist, he or she feels good when the teacher puts the drawing on the wall for all to see.  But is this the way media should be managed?  

This is a simplistic explanation for the problems related to using popularity as the measure of what counts in the news, but the tendency for people to use vote-getting to measure their own success, and for others to assess them as well, means information written by well-meaning, motivated, yet agenda-driven people, who may not fact check sources, nor even write well,  will be read more often than others.  The result is that the popular continues to rise to the top, and the very art of writing with skill, detail and fact-checking may be lost.

.America's Got Talent is surely good entertainment, but too often many people wonder why obviously talented people are chosen over someone with a unique following and an absorbing personal story.  The problem is that when the news is treated in the same way, it is a world of us that suffers from lack of knowledge and quality information, at a time when universal education is important for creating and maintaining free communities and preventing or correcting the major problems around the world..

A new direction might be to re-examine some of the old ways used in the new methods of transmitting news via print, online and other forms of mass communication.  Rewarding quality news material that is in-depth, detailed and fact-checked is important, and that reward means to let investors and owners know by active reading and participation.  And perhaps news outlets need to remove the comments per article and return to the Letters to the Editor methods for reader interaction, so that vote-getting for popularity does not drive the news. Universal education through the mass media might then become a reality, as people learn the sciences, history and other details to help them understand why government leaders make certain decisions.  It can also serve to improve holding power to account, that goal of the press established by Thomas Jefferson's words that are likely as good today as they were when written and that allow the past and present best methods to present news in ways that can make a difference in the lives of individuals and nations.

Gay rights issues said to be ignored by governments, media in high profile athletics

Sochi Olympics 2014 stamp

Gay rights groups protested humanitarian issues were being overlooked in the embrace of the  Sochi Olympic games.  They see the media hype over the athletes, the accommodations and the terrorist threat taking precedence over concerns about the treatment of gays in Russia, something that was known before the games and seldom examined by the media during the course of the preparation for the games.

The announcement by the mainstream press at the Olympics and other sports events highlights worries that terrorists may use toothpaste as bombs to bring down planes.  Journalists announced their accommodations as poor, with leaking toilets, beds without proper bedding and open and broken windows in the face of winter's cold temperatures.  All of that is important news, but the lack of consistent reporting in favor of long interviews with athletes and their families, as are the program highlights of the Today Show, overlooks the importance of humanitarian values neglected in favor of "entertainment" news.

Russia announced several times, both by government officials including Putin and the official press, that the law of Russia bars homosexual behavior.   Openly gay Olympic medal recipient and diving champion,  Greg Lougani, told the Huffington Post that he believes it was a mistake for the world to accept Russia as a host for the Olympic games because of Russia's anti-gay legislation.

According to gay rights proponents and their supporters, Russia's law that bans pro-gay "propaganda" that could be accessible to minors is so restrictive that any public expression of support for gay rights is often met with a severe response.

In the meantime, gay rights groups are taking to the streets around the world to show their concern about the neglect of humanitarian ideals in relationship to treatment of gays.  They have been comparing the celebration of the games in Sochi as reminiscent of the atmosphere created by Adolph Hitler's condemnation of minorities prior to the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 and have been calling for boycotts of corporate sponsors.

Athletics remains the sport where people can show their physical prowess.  But politics remains one of the principal issues when the games are high profile.  It is then that human rights ideals may be overlooked in the din of nationalistic noises, with the media on the sidelines as spectators

Rape insurance? It's now the law in Michigan

Judge's tools

Henry Lee Jones---After years spent trying to convince the public that the life of every fetus (even those originating from rape or incest) was at the very heart of their moral concerns, Michigan's Republican legislators on Wednesday decided that the opportunity to profit from the abortion of fetuses trumps any moral concerns.

The Michigan (Republican dominated) Legislature  passed a bill last Wednesday that would prohibit private insurance anywhere in the state from covering abortions, unless a woman's life is in danger. The Huffington Post reports that this measure (which takes effect in March-2014) called the "Abortion Insurance Opt-Out-Act", will force both women and employers to purchase a separate abortion rider (rape insurance) if they want the abortion procedure covered in cases of rape and or incest. 

Some Democratic women legislators became extremly emotional during Wednesday's debate as they told personal horror stories of miscarriages and abortions. Said Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer(D),"This tells women who are raped.....that they should have planned ahead for it; make no mistake this is anything but a citizens initiative. It's a special interest groups perverted dream come true." Citing the Guttmacher Institute, The New York Times reports that 80 percent of national private insurance plans currently cover abortions. The Guttmacher Institute also reports that eight other states have already passed laws similar to Michigans "Abortion Insurance Opt-out-Act,"but they also add that Michigan is only the second state to actually make available, rape insurance.

Salon's Katie McDonough, in her report called the law "despicable". For the "Right to Life in Michigan" anti-abortion group, the second time was the charm. They tried to pass this same law last year, but Govenor Rick Snider vetoed it. But backed by dubious financiers and using "back door" tactics, the group collected 300,000 voter signatures on a petition this year and forced a second vote on the measure. After passing both chambers, the bill automatically becomes law and nullifies any veto from the Govenor. Being a former Michigander myself, I can tell you that the opposition does have a small "window of opportunity" to gather enough voter signatures to bring this measure to a public vote.

US, UK failing education, but here's the #1 way to improve it

Education

In 2010 the US ranked 14^th in the world education rankings of 15-year-olds, and the UK ranked 26^th. At the time folks worried about the drop in education in these developed countries. But have they improved and if not, what can be done to change these figures?

2012 rankings shows the US falling further behind at 36^th in ranking, with the UK at 26 again, except in science where teens scored above average.

While countries develop new techniques, teaching strategies and ideas for solving the problems in education, there is one area needing attention that could make a difference.

When was the last time you as a parent, grandparent or representative adult figure in a young person's life somewhere read an entire book, attended a classic play or played music of special quality from the great composers? A check of local adults in the Portland, Oregon area, at random, found out of 20 adults surveyed, only six had read an entire book and two had played classical music or attended a play.

Huffington Post found 28% of adults in the United States had not read a book in an entire year. But Slate also observes that most people don't even read an entire article online but simply skim through it. Many writers maintain that few people appear to read an entire article, even though they comment on social media, like Facebook, under a title link.Is that because it is more difficult to read online? Newspapers are dying, experts remind us, because of lack of interest in print media.

With the instant communication and technological temptations associated with social media, finding the time to read, study, converse and interact with others in a learning and growing situation appears to be more and more difficult for many people. Most people maintain they don't have time to do those things folks did in past generations as part of family and community life.

Teenagers watch their parents and other adults sitting for hours in front of television sets watching reality shows and television news mostly centering on politics. Enjoying a good book or an educational program can be a rare enough happening that many adolescents have few examples of anything other than what they themselves are doing, interacting socially on Internet media platforms and watching television reality shows and movies. Education is seen as terminal rather than a life-long and enjoyable process.

Complacency and apathy have become the adversaries of education. Those who have more in many cases lack incentive to improve, to look to the future, and to instill in young people the quest for knowledge.

Children learn what they observe from others. The first, and most important, solution to the problems of education rests with those who offer examples. So in changing educational systems, folks need to look within themselves for what they can do to change the direction of young people so that education becomes the goal of everyone.